Seeing evil and stopping evil.
Most of us can recognize an act of cruelty as wrong.
However, some people don't see cruelty as wrong.
These people have desires.
These desires must be fulfilled no matter the cost.
No matter the cost to their community, their friendships, or their family.
Psychology has defined them as sociopaths.
Their desires, their passions, and their pure lust must be gratified regardless of who they hurt.
One such person caught in a web of evil was I.
I was in a bad place of my own doing when evil entered my home.
I had lost touch with myself, a phrase that aptly describes the situation. Still, it doesn't accurately capture the reality.
I had lost touch with the world.
I had become isolated.
I had convinced myself that I did not deserve love.
An empathic spiral.
Day after day, the weight of other people's fears and especially their anger washed over me like an unrelenting tide.
Many days, I couldn't catch my breath.
The anger of others would make me run.
People's emotions had, since the first day I could remember, struck fear in me.
In my early years, most of which I cannot remember because I lost my memory of my family when I was 17 due to a near-death experience.
What I do remember was the hands without a face hitting me till I bled.
I was told that my father was a rageaholic.
His physical and mental abuse was continuous.
But my tale is not about my father.
It's about how I was hanging onto my life by a thread and how that thread was cut by a sociopath.
I found myself running into oblivion because of my own fear of anger.
I believed I shouldn't be alive any longer.
I never forced myself to ask why a person was angry.
I had always assumed I was the cause of other people's anger.
To avoid angering them, I would never ask for clarification of their emotions.
I internalized others' pain and gave back humor.
My wife and I never argued.
But year after year, I receded, believing in error that she was angry with me.
Empathic personalities like my own are not magical.
We may be sensitive to emotion, but we're not mind-readers able to discern the origin of a feeling.
As in my case, my total lack of self-esteem always dictated to me that I was the cause.
So, in the last summer of what was going to be my life, I determined I was going to leave this wicked world.
Previously, a person came to live with us.
It was during that time that I came to find out through a four-year conversation that a 20-something sexual predator slept under our roof.
Their preferred victim were middle-aged housewives going through a rough divorce.
The graphic details of their constant exploits are so horrendous that this person would recount all their adventures on their own.
No prodding is needed.
They would drink a six-pack and tell the tale of sexual abuse.
Their bragging at first, I thought, was the talk of a blackout alcoholic drug abuser, which they also turned out to be.
That was until they provided me with proof of their exploits, which they had kept in a notebook.
Their reason for showing me their monster?
They thought that because I did not believe in a religion, it meant I was part of their club.
The club of the immoral.
The club of sociopaths who will do whatever is needed, right or wrong, to achieve their goal.
Because the sociopath, the psychopath, knows there are no eternal consequences to our actions here while we are alive.
There is no hell.
No heaven.
The sociopath's club credo is to lie about everything, and even that is a lie.
Their club members weave a web of deception that the sociopath believes no one can see through.
The club membership bylaws state that you can use people however you want.
This person allowed me into their mind, their reasoning, their wants, their desires, their lusts.
They falsely believed I was a monster like them.
I was the opposite.
I wanted to get away from this person.
I wanted to leave this world behind and all its evil.
I knew I didn't belong here.
It was at this moment that the beast, in pursuit of their orgasm, put their sights on a friend.
I told the beast repeatedly to leave my friend alone.
He couldn't, he wouldn't his lust had to be filled.
I didn't know that at that moment my future was sealed.
I put my plans into action to end my life.
To wander off into the Pacific Redwoods never to be seen again.
But then...
That friend read something in me and asked an important question.
How are you?
I told the truth.
I was leaving.
Then...
Then, that friend's voice, a single drop of human kindness, gave me pause in my dark journey to oblivion.
I stopped on the edge of forever and listened.
I had to...
It was the voice of love...
I fell.
I fell into the dark of night.
I fell.
When I hit bottom and realized I was not dead, I heard a voice call my name.
I turned and saw no one.
The voice came from inside me.
It said I was ready now to begin the good work.
To spread hope.
To put light onto the darkness.
To talk of love.
Unexpectantly, this crucible of self-hate I had lived through had gifted me.
I now had in my hand the sword of justice.
I had learned of evil, which had given me my armor.
I had fallen so that I could stand.
I was broken so I could be rebuilt.
If you have fallen, you can stand too.
It is not through our blessings that we are useful; it is through our trials and hardships that make us into who we are meant to be.
Our scars show where we have been.
Do right.
Peace
Daniel J Frey aka Toby
